To price a pound of hardneck garlic you add up its full cost first: the seed, compost, mulch and water by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the mesh bag and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one pound costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a pound of hardneck garlic that costs $6.91 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $14.71, rounded up to $14.75. Garlic is a year of hand work, planting, mulching, weeding, harvesting, curing and cleaning, so time is most of a pound's cost. A restaurant price is a different number, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a Colorado garlic farm prices culinary garlic for markets and a restaurant.
The short version
- Full cost = inputs a pound + your time + mesh bag and label + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Count a year of hand work, spread over the pounds you sell.
- Price seed garlic separately: it sells for far more.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each pound from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a pound's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Seed, compost, mulch and water | The batch's cost ÷ pounds a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ pounds × your hourly rate |
| Mesh bag and label | Per pound |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the pounds you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The farm's year is in garlic farm business plan, and farm stand prices in farm stand prices.
An example: a pound of hardneck garlic
Paonia Mesa Garlic, the made-up garlic farm near Paonia, Colorado, I use in these examples, harvests about 2,000 pounds from half an acre and saves 400 for next year's seed, leaving 1,600 to sell:
| A half-acre crop | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Seed garlic, saved from last year | 400 lb | $400.00 |
| Compost and fertilizer | $600.00 | |
| Straw mulch | 60 bales | $480.00 |
| Irrigation | $300.00 | |
| A batch | $1,780.00 |
| A pound | Cost |
|---|---|
| Seed, compost, mulch and water, $1,780.00 ÷ 1600 | $1.11 |
| Time, 24,000 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 1600 | $5.00 |
| Mesh bag and label | $0.30 |
| Overhead | $0.50 |
| Full cost | $6.91 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $6.91 ÷ 0.47 = $14.71, so $14.75. At $14.75 a pound, each leaves $7.40. It had been asking $14.00, which leaves $6.67. A restaurant pays $9.00 a pound, which leaves $1.82, small for the work, so it gets the smaller heads. Seed garlic sells for $24 a pound to other growers. The work of the year, about 400 hours, is the 24,000 minutes in the calculator; braids and black garlic are packed as in how to package garlic for sale.
Get the calculator
Download the garlic price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's inputs, amounts and costs, the pounds it makes, the hands-on minutes, the mesh bag and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a pound on paper. A wet spring that rots some bulbs, a harvest that cures smaller, and seed garlic held back for next year change what each pound sold really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each pound from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each pound is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case or sack to the gram.
True cost from the batch. Each batch takes ingredients at their real cost, from the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows up in the next batch.
Price creep. A price-creep report per supplier shows which ingredient is quietly costing more.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a pound costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Bulbs that rotted in curing | Not counted | Waste by reason |
| An ingredient creeping up | Noticed at tax time | A price-creep report |
| Whether wholesale still pays | A guess | Margins on real cost |
Recipes, batches and true cost are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.